Opinion

One seat, or Europe's security is sold separately

Moscow wants each NATO country signing its own pact, Finland already said no. A single mandate, carried by Kallas, turns Europe's seat at the next talks into the answer.

Correction: An earlier version said "last Thursday" and that the 2003 Kozak memorandum gave Moscow a lever; it was never signed.

Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's special envoy, flew out of Moscow with a promise: European countries are in the next round of talks on ending Russia's war. That is a win. Europe asked for the seat and the seat is agreed. The question now is what arrives in it. One mandate, carried by EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, makes the seat work. Each capital bringing its own file turns the seat into a queue. One seat, one voice, or no deal. The pacts Moscow proposed this month would leave each country to deal with Russia on its own.

Russia's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday that a new European security order could be built on non-aggression agreements each NATO country signs separately with Moscow. Read the design, not the content. In another negotiating group, Echo's sources report, Russia proposed a club of five or six NATO members that could veto the accession of new members, so Ukraine's or Moldova's membership dies inside the alliance by the same unanimity trap Europe spent decades escaping inside the union. Kremlin adviser Yuri Ushakov says Putin raised Moscow's 2021 demands again in the Kremlin talks. We have seen this ultimatum before. It ended with tanks crossing a border. Finland saw the trap and said no. Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen rejected the bilateral pacts in parliament, saying NATO is by definition a defence alliance and Finland has no reason to sign separate ones. Moldova's government called the scare stories exactly what they are: provocations from Moscow to stop its EU path. Sceptics say non-aggression pacts cost nothing and are cheap reassurance. Paper signed with Russia by one small state is the Kozak memorandum again, the 2003 federalization model, as Alexandru Tănase, former president of Moldova's Constitutional Court, warned.

So make the seat the answer to the design.

Five years from now, a young Finn, an Estonian, a Moldovan starting out should live in a Europe whose security is negotiated from one chair. That chair is the seat Europe already holds. Walk in as one, and the country-by-country pitch dies of disuse. The bilateral pacts Valtonen rejected and the veto club both die at that single chair. Divided, each capital gets its own page instead: Finland asked to go back to before NATO, the Baltic states asked to give up bases, the whole order unpacked in pieces. Defence Minister Antti Häkkänen has already called such demands outrageous, and his warning is the one to keep: the softer the West treats Russia's military plans, the further Russia goes in testing its limits.

Ceasefire first, then architecture, as Kallas and Valtonen both say: keep the pressure on Russia's war machine until the shooting stops, then discuss the order Russia claims it wants. That order is written from one chair, or it is written against you. So the governments meeting in Dublin should set one mandate for the next round, carried by Kallas, with its single rule published in every capital: no member state opens or signs separate security negotiations with Russia, and no term touching Finland's NATO membership, the Baltic states, Moldova's EU path or NATO accession sits on any table. Make the mandate the price of admission. Any government that still wants its own pact has to reach for it outside the table everyone else sits at. Tell your own government: one seat, or you walk out of the queue.